In its 128-year history since its inception, Mercedes-Benz has never lacked any classic designs. But now, when I see mercedes-benz GLA-class, new S-class Coupe, new C-class and then just launched AMG GT and other models, Mercedes-Benz's classic design elements are getting less and less, I can't help but wonder: "Has Mercedes-Benz's design path now subverted the original classic design concept?" "With doubts in mind, I embarked on a visit to the Pioneer Design Center in Mercedes-Benz Sindelfingen. There, Gordon Wagner, the current Design Director of Mercedes-Benz, and his team will give me the answer to this question.
Mercedes-Benz's classic design concept - "Drop line" and "Pontoon"
When it comes to the classic design concept of Mercedes-Benz, the "Drop line" line and the "Pontoon" pontoon design are very representative. In fact, in Mercedes-Benz's new generation of C-class cars, we can see that it also has a "Drop line" side line design inherited from the 1930s model. But it seems to me that for the current Mercedes-Benz, the classic design elements are already very few, and now more models give us another visual impact. But Mercedes-Benz design director Gordon Wagner gave us another answer to this question.
Pioneer Design Center of Mercedes-Benz Sindelfingen, Germany
The Visiting Pioneer Design Center in Sindelfingen, Germany, is about 40 km from the Stuttgart metropolitan area. Currently, Mercedes-Benz has five avant-garde design centers on five continents, located in Como, Italy, Carlsbad, California, Tokyo, Japan, Beijing, China (just established) and Sindelfingen, Germany.
Among them, the Design Center in Sindelfingen, Germany, can be regarded as the design headquarters of Mercedes-Benz, and many models that we are familiar with are born here. The current Mercedes-Benz design director Gordon Wagner and his design team work here, and as the representative model of Wagner's core design language, the Mercedes-Benz F800 style Concept is developed by the Sindelfingen Pioneer Design Center. As for what is Gordon Wagner's core design language? Let's sell it first.
The soul of the Design Center: Gordon Wagner – the youngest design director in Mercedes-Benz history
When Gordon Wagner is mentioned, there may still be many people who are not quite sure who he is. Although he is not as famous as Chris Bangor, as the youngest design director in mercedes-benz history, Gordon Wagner is continuing to write about the future of Mercedes-Benz in his "language".
In the summer of 2008, the former Mercedes-Benz design director, Peter Pfeiffer, retired after 40 years of service for Mercedes-Benz, and then Gordon Wagner officially took office, at the age of 39, he shouldered the title of the youngest design director in mercedes-benz history. Born in Germany, Gordon Wagner completed his studies in industrial design at the University of Essen in Germany.
In 1999, he became head of design for the exterior and interior design department of Mercedes-Benz's Design Center in California, where he and his team designed models such as the Gl-Class, M-Class and R-Class. In 2002, Gordon Wagner oversaw the design of Mercedes-Benz A-Class, B-Class, C-Class, E-Class, CLK, second-generation SLK, S-Class, CLS-Class and other models, and most of the Mercedes-Benz models we see in China are almost completely covered.
Today, the success of Mercedes-Benz's new generation of C-Class, GLA-Class, S-Class Coupe and Mercedes-AMG GT is inseparable from him. These models, together with the new E-Class and CLS Class, gordon Wagner finally established an era of his own through the design of these models. These models have also become representatives of the Sindelfingen Design Center to interpret the latest design concept of Mercedes-Benz.
The core design philosophy: "sensual", "pure" - but it does not mean complete subversion
The advent of each Mercedes-Benz model attracts a lot of attention, and their design interprets the different personalities represented by each model in a unique concept, and arouses their expectations of the model with the design itself before everyone knows anything about the relevant innovations or technologies. In order to create this sensory enjoyment and stimulation, the important work of the Mercedes-Benz design team is to define the core design concept. The words "sensual" and "pure" are the core design ideas that Gordon Wagner brought.
According to Gordon Wagner, "Good design is meant to be beautiful, but it also has to be intelligent." In Mercedes-Benz's design philosophy, aesthetics must coexist with wisdom, and these two points correspond to the "sensibility" and "purity" in the core concept. Among them, "sensibility" contains all feelings and things that can touch the heart, and the modern sense of luxury is the expression of Mercedes-Benz at the perceptual level; "pure" refers to the essential elements of things, and people will understand the essence of things through modeling, which is pure, and it is precisely this that Mercedes-Benz's modern modeling design interprets.
In conversations with Gordon Wagner, we noticed that Wagner was playing with his iPhone6 Plus from time to time. Wagner also quipped: "I am a person who likes to pursue fashion, in today's society, luxury goods have become no longer luxurious, all kinds of famous products are everywhere." Of course, you can do it if you want to have a modern sense of luxury, like this iPhone 6 Plus in my hand, Apple not only gave him a simple, unique design, but also gave us very pure technology. It's like the Mercedes-Benz design philosophy, which gives the purest design to every Model of Mercedes-Benz. ”
Although the iPhone6 Plus and Mercedes-Benz cars are not in the same field, they share a "modern design" and a "modern sense of luxury". For these two concepts, Gordon Wagner and his design team explained through examples how these are implemented on Mercedes-Benz models.
Modern styling design with a new definition of modern luxury
Inside the Sindelfingen Pioneer Design Center, there are three representative models that can showcase Mercedes-Benz's new design concept – the CLA Class, the S-Class Coupe and the AMG GT. These three cars represent Mercedes-Benz's modern design philosophy for four-door coupes, two-door coupes and sports cars.
"One of the reasons we're a design leader is that we dare to create novel shapes that no one expected, and they aptly reflect the innovative position of a car," Wagner said. "The Mercedes-Benz CLA-class model unveiled at the 2012 Paris Motor Show has a drag coefficient of only 0.23, which is an amazing performance in its class. At the same time, the mobile styling design of this car has also won universal recognition and praise in the industry.
Regarding the shape of The new S-Class Coupe model of Mercedes-Benz, some people always say that there is no shadow of the new S-Class on the car. Yes, Wagner said that this car was born to distinguish it from Mercedes-Benz's new S-Class. The positioning of this car is the luxury coupe (Luxury Coupe), it is not a sports coupe (Sports Coupe), horizontal taillight design, through the entire tail chrome decoration, these are actually moving closer to the concept of luxury, is so pure.
As for the Mercedes-AMG GT, this car is more of a inheritance and borrowing from the genes of Mercedes-Benz's classic models. The protruding fender design, the rear-shifting cockpit and the sleek rear line are the design concepts of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, W196 and W198 models.
At this time, some people can't help but ask whether the design concept of Mercedes-Benz today is adjusted to meet the tastes of emerging markets. Mr. Wagner replied: "Luxury brands are to have the consciousness of the top design, the current new design trends are not related to the market, just like Europeans although they like classic design, but Mercedes-Benz will not give up sticking to their own design ideas in order to cater to the tastes of some people." Subsequently, due to the limited time, Mr. Wagner answered the final question, and then he entrusted the task of interpreting the definition of Mercedes-Benz modern luxury in detail to his design team.
In the past five years, the design complexity of Mercedes-Benz's models has obviously improved, and the shape of the lamp has become a very important point in interpreting the design concept. For a car, the design of the headlights is more important than the finishing touch. Therefore, Mercedes-Benz has set up a special team responsible for lighting design.
Lighting designer Apostolos Antoniadis said: "At present, mercedes-benz headlights have a lot of bionic designs, which makes the headlights of many new Cars of Mercedes-Benz more like human eyes. In addition, in order to interpret the definition of modern luxury, Mercedes-Benz also cooperated with Swarovski to equip mercedes-Benz with nearly 80 crystals in the headlights of the new S-Class Coupe. Of course, the design of the light can not ignore the regulations and functionality. "Now the group dedicated to lighting design has applied 3D printer technology to mold production, and I believe that in the future, Mercedes-Benz's headlight shape will continue to evolve."
As for the forward grille design of the front of the car, body designer Slavche Tanevski told us that the front face design of the AMG GT is very representative. The mesh grille in the front of the new car is obviously stretched outwards, which can also be opened to increase the downforce of the body while creating a low body effect. This view is different from the earlier ones, and the more useful design of the mid-mesh grille is to deal with the heat dissipation of the front of the new car. Nowadays, the new car manufacturing process and technology are becoming more and more mature, and the design of the air intake grille of the central network is more like being created to highlight the shape.
Walking to the interior, interior material designer Martin Bremer revealed to us that Mercedes-Benz can provide nearly 10,000 combinations for customers to choose in the material and color matching of the interior. Even for the texture and punching style of the seats, the design office has to pay nearly a million euros for this. Of course, in addition to these, interior designers also travel all over the world to find inspiration for interior design through characteristic traditional craftsmanship. On Mercedes-Benz's new S-Class, the way the seats are routed and punched is inspired by the craftsmanship of shoemakers in Budapest, Hungary.
Of course, in the overall design of the interior, each Mercedes-Benz car also has its own different characteristics. Interior designer Jan Kaul said that the overall design of Mercedes-Benz's new C-class console draws on the design style of the aircraft; and the central console of Mercedes-Benz's new S-class is very exquisite in workmanship and materials, including different color combinations, which is also a pure explanation. As for the Mercedes-AMG GT, the center console of the new car adopts the cockpit style design of the aircraft, all the buttons are within reach, and its design is different from other models, but the concept also confirms the "sensual" and "pure" design language.
In Wagner's design team, there is a team dedicated to design verification, which may sound like a work that is not very relevant to design, but they are actually part of the design of human-computer interaction. The reason why design verification is needed is precisely because Mercedes-Benz tries to make the "emotional" core more extreme. Norbert Kurz, who is specially responsible for design verification, told us that taking Mercedes-Benz's new C-class as an example, in addition to our traditional understanding of human-computer interaction systems (such as THE HARMON system), the design verification is really more detailed, such as the size difference of the central control knob of the new C-class air conditioner air outlet, and the texture style is determined after countless experiences and arguments.
As a luxury brand, Mercedes-Benz's future design goal is to create unique products with strong Mercedes-Benz colors. After listening to each member of the Wagner design team tell us in detail about the definition of Mercedes-Benz modern luxury and how they put it into action, I was very impressed by the design team and understood the new interpretation of Mercedes-Benz modern luxury.
epilogue:
Through this visit to the Sindelfingen Avant-Garde Design Center and gordon Wagner's meticulous introduction, the answer to the question in my mind seems to have been answered. Yes, today's Mercedes-Benz design concept is not subverting tradition, which should be counted as a inheritance and evolution of brand charm. 128 years ago, the essence of Mercedes-Benz's founding was carl Benz's understanding of the principles and processes of automobile creation, and Gottlieb Daimler's passion and desire for driving pleasure. And the two of them actually represent the two aspects of "purity" and "sensibility" respectively, don't they? (Text/Photo Autohome Zhou Yuxuan)